"LAW" OR "LQR"?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 120, 24 May 1933, Page 8

"LAW" OR "LQR"?

(to tho Editor.) Sir,—A smatterer in history and a dabbler in literature goes quaking to" the microphone.' He knows too well what dire offences he may ignorantly perpetrate against those almost sacred things; Life und.LetterSk 'When he sees a. critic.signing himself '"Teacher of English" he is, if provoked,'- reassured. There was a lady in the "Arabian Nights" who, made folk uneasy by eating rice a grain at a,time off the hook of a bodkin. Thus behave when seated at the sumptuous fcaet of English letters nearly all the ael£-«tttitled "Teachers of English''-^ of my.' ncquaintance. Lazarus was content with .the crumbs. Teachers of English, it has always seemed to me, prefer the husks. Hence the devastating desiccation that has ' overspread a study .whote mission it id-to Vitalise the imagination. and to fire .-the. ideals of every well-descended Englishman. I know '. 'Teacher of English".means no offence. Perhaps he even extracts for the benefit of his helpless"charges a little of the rich milk of true culture as distinguished from a snobbish pretension to it. But if so, why does he name himself of the tribe? In one point only I agree with him. I have often marvelled at the superhuman urbanity of announcers when dealing with shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, with, the prices of tallow, hides, and Chewing's Fescue. ' Their imperturbable suavity has been alike my envy and my despair. How, an announcer can forbear impulsively breaking in on iw with news of the twins or the exultant information that the wife's mother has gone to visit Gcorffo I do not know. Personally I wish he would. The official ironing out flat of what arc idler all human beings is the heavy price we moderns pay iot- bureaucratic .technocracy. Still, much as I admire the selfless immolation of announcer*, I dare not aspire to emulate, it; I hud almost as &oon be a teacher of English.—l am,'etc., F. L. COMBS. P.S.—"T. of E." is quite right. Testing myself on the point after writing this letter, 1 find thut I do tend to turn "Law" into ''Lor." /